Symposium Lecture

Pollination of fruit crops in India

Fruits play a significant role in economic development, nutritional security, employment generation and overall economic growth of a country. They provide a dynamic tool for enhancing economic returns, creating employment avenues and ensuring ecological sustainability. Our population is growing, but the per capita availability of land and water resources are going down.  It is obvious that we will have to produce more and more from less and less land and water.  This can be achieved only through the ever-green revolution pathway which can help us to increase productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm. There is widespread concern about malnutrition in our country and it is now clear that for every nutritional malady, there is a horticultural remedy. There is a need for enhanced growth and productivity and quality of temperate, tropical and sub-tropical fruits. Production constraints include two diverse but mutually interlinked approaches such as attack of pests on one hand and inadequate pollination on the other. The widespread use of pesticides in modern agriculture throughout the world have become necessary for the protection of the plants against insect pests and diseases to obtain higher yields to meet out the food requirement of increasing population but the injudicious use of pesticides has resulted in contamination of agroecosystem and agriculture produce including nectar and pollen and caused heavy losses to the pollinators. Such contaminated nectar and pollen when brought to hive may cause damage to brood besides the contamination of the stored honey. Pollinators provide an ecosystem service that enables plants to produce fruits and seeds. About 70%of the world's plants require a pollinator to produce fruits/seed of which 35% are crop species and this account for one in three mouthfuls of food and drink we consume.